DarkTower

I'm not home yet. :( I for the life of me can't figure out how to install a client so i would be able to play with everyone. Thinking i will have to just wait for a few years till there is a "click and play" :'( :'( :'( Trooper - follow the steps detailed in this video from the always wonderful Positive Gamer on YouTube: There is an auto-update client and it will install the media for you. Just follow the steps. If you don't want to watch the whole video, the steps are given in the description under the video. Good luck! There are villains to be arrested!!!

I am humbled and honored by what you guys have achieved. That's coming from a hard core C++ & C# developer in the high end of the industry. I know what it must have taken to get this up and running, and I'm assuming you had to compile the actual processes themselves. I can only imagine what the configuration is like for something this proprietary. For my wife and I, this was a very, very big memory. She had never played any MMO, and so for me it was like watching the most dear person to me go through what I went through with EQ. And then this was doubled, because even though I was a seasoned MMO player, this quickly became my favorite game of all time - and it still is. The combat system in this game is so orthogonal, and the power effects are so balanced - everything has a purpose and an effect. Tactics actually matter - knowing your build and how to play is the difference between you or one of your teammates taking a dirt nap. This is the only game I've ever enjoyed healing in, and healing is one of my favorite roles. From a graphics perspective, it should be studied. It's a very low-poly game, which was an amazingly wise choice on the original developers' part, because they deliberately set out to make an MMO which could support a frame rate with enough head room that 30-50 people could be blasting away (like say on a giant monster event) and zero lag on the client. That combined with the quality of the animations and this game not only still stands up next to newer games - it still exceeds them. There is nothing out there with the level of craft in the billboard effects which make up most of the power effects, which are superb. That combined with the sound quality is a lethal blow which hooks you so completely. Take SWTOR for example - I've been playing this as a consolation for years (waiting and hoping for someone to put out a decent superhero MMO - there are none, sorry Champions and DCUO, and Marvel? Please.) SWTOR is a great game in it's own right - immersive, huge story, great graphics...but pretty crappy combat system compared to CoX. The animations are goofy, the speeders are slower than superspeed and have no physics. So, yeah, this means a hell of a lot to us. We spend the first 7 years of our marriage in Paragon City and had probably 9-10 50's each, several decked out with incarnate builds. As others have said, if it all came to a halt today, you still did something so wonderful, so sublime and so meaningful to so many people...well, it can't really be expressed in words. You have my deepest and humblest thanks!

Yes, and if you see that error, I believe you're going to have to delete that toon and recreate them. I had a situation where I got caught inside a mission door, couldn't get in or out (and this was happening to basically everyone) and then if you kill the game client process, you'll end up never being able to log back into that character. The message received (after the "You've been kicked" message) was that the particular character is currently logging out, and then you can never get back in, no matter how long you wait. This whole situation seems untenable. My wife and I are considering stopping playing altogether. We appreciate greatly what the Homecoming team is done. We just doubt the viability of the situation itself. There's too many players for a free hosted effort. The fact that this group of people made this happen at all is amazing, let along to field 4 server entities, and still not have enough processing power.

You're not alone - my daughter had characters when she was 11 and played with my wife and I. Now, she is 21 and has moved out of the house. But even still, she's excited about playing CoH again!

Yes, it's been a long hiatus for all of us. I didn't realize how much it had affected my wife and I. When it got shut down, naturally we tried to find another game, because this was something we spent a lot of time doing together. Hell, my wife was a more serious player than I was. She had over 800 badges at one point, and the crafting table, etc, etc. One of the neat things about CoH is that real women actually like to play it. I remember thinking SWTOR might be substitute, but the combat was flat and stale. I played it (and still do) but she was never able to get into it. So, for us, this was a total revelation. I haven't stopped watching news, tracking the spiritual successor projects and just hoping...and it became such a transparent activity that I didn't even notice any more. I became like that character in a movie who has been searching for his dog who was lost on a vacation 7 years back and now has moved to the town where the dog was last seen.

Yes, the costume save works. It is just the costume and can only be done while you are creating a character. I went in and created saved costume files for a few of my favorite mains yesterday.

My guess is that it's architected as a web service in front of a database that functions like a separate app (and in essence is a web application, though it has an in game UI) - I never sniffed the network back in the day to see the activity, but that's how I would have built it. So, that probably means that a dedicated web server has to be setup and the code itself may not be reverse engineered or may not be in possession - it might even be written in a managed language. Just some supporting speculation as to why it could be some time, and why it wouldn't have been a direct priority yet.

My wife and I just had a conversation about funding, and one point that came out was that if NCSoft had said "Hey - we're going to pull the plug unless people are willing to agree to a higher subscription fee - are you willing to pay more and if so how much?" I would have gladly doubled my subscription fee or even more. So, we are certainly willing to do that here. We all didn't get that question from NCSoft the first time around, and I do not want to take any chances with this opportunity. Even if someone said there is risk, or that you might pay for 12 months and then something happens - I would still do it. I place no conditions on my willingness to pay to support hosting costs.

Yes, I might be interested in carrying a cloud or rack server. Let me know something about topology and costs and we could start talking about that. I run a boutique software development firm (Hatch Innovations, LLC, http://hatchinnovations.com) and I've done some big brand, high scale systems, so I've had some experience in designing server pools, load balancing schemes etc.

First of all - I can't thank you all enough. But since that has been said 11 million times (and worth every one), I'll cut to the chase: 1. I'm an advanced Windows, MSVC++ and C# developer. I don't have a lot of free cycles, but I can help if there is a need - I can look at what is needed and I might be able to do bursts from time to time. I am also a 3D modeler and understand game model formats, texturing, modeling, sculpting, rigging etc. I work in Blender, LightWave and Maya. My guess is that you have no need for that, since this is an existing game server which is quite mature. 2. Even more important: My wife and I would like to setup a recurring donation. Please let us know just as soon as possible on how I can remit that to you. 3. Will this server build be published at some point as a private server build? I would be interested in running a private server for several reasons, including as a backup and also to understand the topology requirements.

DarkTower / Ghostwriter / Hexcode / Zim Zim / Captain Dense / Grayze (and those are just the ones people might actually know - my wife and I were toon junkies as I'm sure many of us were) My wife's characters were Portia VanDel, Golden Oleander, Frigorific, Fairy God Bubbler, Soyala and Evil Wisteria (among many others).

I was DarkTower on Protector, and my wife was Portia VanDel. We eventually moved to Virtue, but we were on Protector for a few years.

You have my total support, and I'm absolutely blown away at what you've collectively accomplished, and that's coming from an advanced, multiplatform C++ developer with game experience. Not an idle comment is my point. Thanks again for everything you guys are doing!